Clotilde Coron - Technological Change

As for technology, it is, according to the classical definition, the social science that takes a technique as its object, the study of techniques, tools, machines and materials. However, it should be recognized that clearly distinguishing the two concepts may seem difficult. Therefore, we will admit, by extension and according to a widespread use, the use of the term technology as a grouping of the techniques, procedures, methodologies, equipment and discourses associated with their implementation. In this second sense, we will speak of digital technology, biotechnology, agro-technology, etc.

In any case, we will not confuse the technical object, the product of human activity, with technology. The technical object is only one of its elements, the most concrete, the hard material of technology, “hardware”. It is a solid thing consisting of one or more tangible and intangible components (organs, information, energy and other resources), functionally arranged, designed and realized to meet a specific need or needs. Among the technical objects, we will distinguish between the technical equipment (infrastructure, machinery and tools) used to produce other objects, and the resulting products (see Figure I.1).

Figure I.1. From technology to object

These clarifications are proposed as conventions that we would like to share with the readers of this book. They will lead us, for example, to consider digital technology as the grouping of a set of technologies covering fields of application as diverse as medicine (video-endoscopy), prototype production (additive manufacturing or 3D printing), architecture (Building Information Models, or geometric representations of a building in 3D), and graphic creation (digital comic strips). Each of these technologies in turn brings together several objects. Thus, additive manufacturing is based on printers, producing objects as varied as functional parts, tooling components, models for metal casting, etc.

Talking about technological change and not technical change is not insignificant. The term “technological change” emphasizes the need not to separate methodical processes from the principles that reflect them and from the ecosystem (economic, social, organizational, ideological) in which the technologies lead to successful practices. In this sense, technological change is not reduced to a change of processes (i.e. a technical change) and even less to a simple change of technical object. Thus, digital transformation is not just about the arrival of a few objects offered to consumers. It leads to a transformation of work structures as a new division of labor between the operator and the machine 1.

Technological change can be approached from three main perspectives. The techno-centric perspective (centered on the technical object) is usually contrasted with the anthropotechnical perspective (centered on the human-technical couple). Between the two, we will insert a “romantic” perspective, based on the joint glorification of the inventor and the object of his creation. We will define these three points of view by illustrating them and considering them both at a “macro” scale (that of the history of technologies) and at a “micro” scale (that of organizational change).

The dominant representation of technological change, conceived in terms of the technology itself, corresponds to a perspective that has been described as techno-centric (Jacob and Ducharme 1995; Rabardel 1995). It is focused on the machine and its possibilities. This is the case for a history of computing in terms of generations of technical objects (see Box I.1).

This first perspective, concerned with the object and its materiality, does not address the human dimension of technological change. At the organizational level, it can lead to neglecting the individual who becomes the residual part of technological change, the part that is said to resist change.

Here, technological change is often represented as a chronological succession of technical objects with which glorious personalities and events are associated, such as the one we have taken up, by way of illustration, in Box I.2.

This tenacious tendency undoubtedly gives an attractive representation of technological change because of its simplicity, its exaltation of the idea of progress and the myth of great men. But it will not be our preference. To attribute to a single individual, at a given date, an invention when it is usually the result of a maturation, resulting from parallel research, seems to us to be from a romantic perspective.

This second perspective leaves little more room for the human being than the first, at most the latter is thought of as the progenitor of the technical object. The emphasis on the glorious origins of a tool is reflected at the organizational level when technological change is referred to exclusively in reference to the individual who was at the origin of a technological innovation and who gives it a prestigious character.